Generali Property Investments, the property asset management unit of Italian insurer Generali, said it has been chosen to set up and manage an EUR 1bn property fund for Italian lender Banco Popolare. The fund, which will be placed later this year with Italian and foreign institutional investors, will have a life of 25 years and will contain the bank's central and branch office buildings.

Generali Property Investments, the property asset management unit of Italian insurer Generali, said it has been chosen to set up and manage an EUR 1bn property fund for Italian lender Banco Popolare. The fund, which will be placed later this year with Italian and foreign institutional investors, will have a life of 25 years and will contain the bank's central and branch office buildings.

'This is the first Italian real estate fund created with the strategic assets of a banking group, although similar operations have already been carried out in other European countries, notably the United Kingdom,' Generali Property Investments CEO Giovanni Maria Paviera said in a statement.

Generali Property Investments was set up in 2006 and has set out to capitalise on the insurer's expertise in the property sector by offering fund management services to third parties. It manages the Scarlatti fund, which in March doubled the value of its property portfolio to EUR 1.4bn with the transfer to the fund of 18 properties belonging to various companies in the Generali group.